


Not Very Skull-Like

by singularly_obsessed (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, But it's there, Kidlock, M/M, Pre-Slash, Teenlock, but they're not really, each, except kind of not really, if you want to look at it that way, like five hundred words of that, more like people are dead, technically, the skull is explained
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-10 22:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4410665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/singularly_obsessed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally scoffed, rolling her eyes. “And keeping it made more sense than handing it over to a professional.”</p><p>“Like you?” Sherlock snipped.</p><p>“At least what I did set him free!”</p><p>“Girls!” Lestrade barked.</p><p>“What I want to know,” Anderson wondered aloud, “is who the bloody hell he <em>is.”</em></p><p>Or: that one AU in which people die but not really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Very Skull-Like

**Author's Note:**

> Mm yes, I did it. This was the thing I promised I'd do when I reached one hundred followers on [tumblr](http://singularlyobsessed.tumblr.com/). So here she is. Not beta'd and technically not brit-picked, though I did use the UK English option in the language selection, so...half brit-picked? Anyone wants to actually do either, be my guest.
> 
> This was definitely inspired by the fanart [Two Ghosts](http://laurelleaves.deviantart.com/art/Two-ghosts-305660587) by oirbmeamu

The first time he’d seen it was from the cradle of his father’s arms. Mr Holmes had been pacing the sitting room, attempting to direct his youngest son’s attention towards the bottle and failing quite miserably. The baby refused to even look at the thing, pale blue eyes focused on the world outside of food and family. It took Mr Holmes a surprisingly long time to pinpoint just what had caught little Sherlock’s attention so thoroughly: the family skull, resting unobtrusively on the mantel. That his child had noticed it at all was astonishing; most guests only found it when it was pointed out to them. 

“Oh, you like him, then?” Mr Holmes murmured, giving up on the bottle and instead bringing the skull down from its perch. Sherlock watched it avidly, tiny fists reaching out to bump against the zygomatic bones. His pudgy fingers scratched over supraorbital ridges, and Mr Homes chuckled lowly as he sat back on the long couch.

“I thought you might enjoy his story,” Mr Holmes said after a while, Sherlock holding the skull by the temporal bones, trying to tug it out of his father’s grasp, closer to himself. “He’s been in your Mummy’s family for a generation or so, since the late nineteenth century. Her Mummy used to say he was a soldier; that he died in combat and that’s why he’s so young.” Mr Holmes taps the maxilla, and Sherlock’s tiny hand quickly follows, petting the area as if to soothe it. “Her Pa used him for work. He wanted to prove the Gates to After closed sooner than originally estimated, but there wasn’t anything to get from this. Not that he could prove, in any case.”

Mr Holmes let the silence settle, content to watch his child examine the skull. As the sun began its arc back down to the horizon, he carefully stood and carried Sherlock back to his room, setting him back in his crib, skull nestled in the corner. Sherlock immediately reached out, fingertips just brushing the curve of the mandible.

Mr Holmes bent down, brushing Sherlock’s dark curls away from his forehead and kissing him gently. “You take good care of him, now. He’ll be with you when the rest of us can’t.”

Sherlock sighed and Mr Holmes closed the door softly behind him.

\- - -

Sherlock came from a long line of Sensitive people. He also came from a long line of Non-Sensitive people. Namely: his Mummy’s and Father’s families respectively.

It had been quite a shock when Mr and Mrs Holmes first announced their engagement. Whispers of scandal and sin tempted many ears, but the couple stood for none of it. Mrs Holmes especially cared nothing for it, and Mr Holmes wisely followed her lead. If a Sensitive such as Mrs Holmes wished to wed a Non-Sensitive like Mr Holmes, then only God could stop her. And stop her He didn’t.

(This, thankfully, quelled most of the ill rumours and allowed the new family peace.)

Mycroft Holmes was born soon after, giving rise to a whole new set of speculations. Would the infamous Holmes Sense be weakened, now that Non-Sensitive blood had mixed with it? Perhaps it would be stronger _for_ it? Was the boy’s mind even _stable?_

Answers came more quickly than anyone could have guessed: the Holmes Heir created an entirely new level of Sensitive, Binding a mother, who worked with his Mummy in calculating possible Gate openings, to her miscarried daughter’s spirit. He was six at the time.

Sherlock was born the year after that, to much less fanfare but no little amount of anticipation. Mycroft calmly and determinedly named him a Sensitive, patiently teaching him even while others grew sceptical with the new Holmes’s lack of activity. That is, until Sherlock’s familiar died when he was ten and in his grief he released the dog into the After. Something that had not been done since the Gates had closed.

Mr and Mrs Holmes kept this strictly in the family, for obvious reasons.

\- - -

Sherlock took his skull _everywhere_.

He remembered the first time Mummy noticed his attachment to it. Sherlock was seven, and she had glanced from him to it to the newspaper his Father was partially hidden behind. Then she’d sipped her tea and said levelly, “You let him have the skull.”

Mycroft stilled, and Father had looked up, smiling at Sherlock as he answered, “Yes, I did. Your Pa is dead, your work has no use for him, and Mycroft has no interest in him either. Sherlock likes him, and I see no harm in letting him have it.”

“It’s a skull,” Mummy said flatly, as if it meant something important.

And Sherlock likes him,” Father had insisted, folding his paper. Sherlock remembered the way his stomach had tightened, how his hands had twitched around his silverware with the urge to pick up his skull and cradle him to his chest. He remembered thinking of all the locks in the house and how to pick them, even the ones his parents thought were hidden; especially the ones _Mycroft_ thought he didn’t know about. He remembered going over every hidden room and secret cabinet big enough to hide his skull and how if anyone so much as _dared_ take his skull he’d get him back and poison every last one of them because the skull was _his_.

“Besides,” Father continued, reigning Sherlock back in. “It’s not as if there’s someone in him. You’ve said it yourself Violet, your father was wrong. There’s no one in the skull.”

Mummy had paused, looking again at the skull, and Sherlock had stopped _being_ until she’d nodded shortly and he could breathe again and breakfast had carried on as usual.

If he was slightly tense until the moment he picked him up and scurried to his room, no one commented on it.

\- - -

After that, Sherlock did not bring the skull to lunch. Or to dinner. Or to any family meal in the following years.

\- - -

Despite having no eyes, the skull had seen a lot.

He’d seen Sherlock through the Nanny years, the tutor years, Mycroft’s boarding school years, _Sherlock’s_ own years in that hell. He was there when Sherlock went in to University; he was there when Sherlock left University. He saw the start of the drugs, the breaks, and finally the end. The first flat, the second, the fifth, the ninth. He was there when Sherlock first found and tried the scientific method. That first explosion that threw him from the desk (Sherlock had been more terrified that he’d been broken than upset about the ruined experiment).

Yes, the skull had seen pretty much everything, despite having no eyes.

\- - -

And what the skull hadn't seen, he’d heard about.

\- - -

Sherlock didn't know what it was about the skull, but he’s such a good listener. He always had been.

Surprisingly, Sherlock couldn’t remember when he started talking to him. All he could recall is when he first _realized_ he constantly spoke to him.

He was fourteen, sitting cross-legged on his bed, facing the wall decorated in experiment notes. The skull was cradled in his lap, one hand resting on the parietal bone while the other gesticulated wildly as he explained.

“… And of course it’s obvious when the results are compared,” he’d been saying, “but now I’m wondering if perhaps—”

_I am talking to a skull._

The thought had come from nowhere, the nowhere-part of his mind he liked to (and still did) call _Mycroft_ because it always pointed out obvious and unnecessary things. It also liked to interrupt him, but that was a bit beside the point because for once Sherlock was thrown by this more-than-obvious observation. Because of _course_ he was talking to the skull. The skull _listened._

_Does it really now?_

Something in Sherlock’s chest had tightened (he knew it only _felt_ that way; it was just _emotion)_ and he glanced down at the skull, hand falling from the air to trace lightly along the sagittal suture. He’d done that hundreds of times, especially when he was younger and couldn’t sleep, couldn’t silence his mind. He’d memorized every detail of his skull. The hair-line crack in the nasal bone and the chip in the left canine and the diameter of the foramen magnum—all of it imbedded in his mind palace. He could pick this skull out from among hundreds, thousands even (still could). Back when he used to dream, he’d thought of the face his skull once wore. Facial reconstruction wasn’t ever that difficult, no matter what his Father implied.

The point, though, was that he knew his skull. Sherlock had studied other skulls (how else was he going to learn gender distinctions and racial identifiers?), and none of them, _none of them,_ felt like his skull. His skull…his skull was _there._ Present. He had a _listening-interpreting-thinking_ feel about him. He wasn’t being sentimental then (and he certainly wasn’t now), and whatever remained, however illogical, must be the truth. And the truth was clear: there was something about his skull that was not entirely skull-like.

That suited Sherlock very much (and still did).

And Sherlock had smiled, small and real, down at his skull, because he listened when others didn’t.

\- - -

Yes, the skull had heard just as much as he’d seen. He heard about the boy that drowned and shouldn’t have. He heard a great deal about a man named Victor, briefly about someone named Sebastian, and more than he’d liked about seven percent solutions. There were tales of a place called Florida and Hudson, of London and Angelo, of World Domination and Mycroft. He’d listened to stories of idiots and lovers and haters, the difference between tobacco ashes, and a deceased Detective Inspector who was perhaps not as dull as it seemed.

Most recently, the skull had heard of something called ‘serial suicide’.

\- - -

Sherlock knew, as soon as he heard about the third body that Lestrade was going to call him in. It was just a matter of time, and while the spirit DI may not exactly sense time passing anymore, he was (thankfully) aware of it and was _(thankfully)_ marginally less stupid than his living co-workers.

Marginally.

(Because honestly, “our best people investigating”? Doubtful.)

It came as no surprise then, when Lestrade appeared in his flat, flickering in stress and all but begging him to examine the new body. Sherlock had grinned as he flung himself around and out of the flat. Mrs Hudson, bless her, was no stranger to his ways (Sherlock had estimated that so long as he paid on time and refrained from damaging the walls too much he could expect to reside at 221b for far longer than his standing average), and had merely chided him half-heartedly on his way out the door.

The scene held everything and nothing of what he needed. There was enough to point out the mistake (of course there’s one; there’s always one when it comes to serial murders), but even after digging up the suitcase he still didn’t have what he needed. Ah, but Jennifer Wilson was no fool, her phone was not simply _lost. Planted,_ now, that was different…

Frustratingly enough the text-lure, stake out from Angelo’s, and following chase across the city bore no results. Consequently, he was in no mood to deal with Lestrade and his goons mucking up his flat.

“Are these _human eyes_?”

“Of course not you idiot, look at the size!” Sherlock snarled, briefly facing the ruin of his kitchen before whirling back on the instigator of it all.

Lestrade held his hands up in a mockery of peace, relaxing deeper into Sherlock’s chair. “Tell us what we want and I’ll tell ‘em to stop.”

Sherlock ground his teeth. His fingers twitched, and oh what he would give to summon a debtor to evict all this _stupidity._ “At the moment, you know as much as I.”

Lestrade snorted. “Yeah, for some reason I doubt that.”

“Is this skull _real_?” Sally demanded from the fireplace, object in question dangling from her fingertips. Ice shot down Sherlock’s spine (that was wrong wrong _wrong_ , put him _down_ ) and he infused it in his voice, commanding her to ( _put him **down!**_ ) put him back.

“‘Him’?” she mimicked, flipping the skull to face her. “So who was he? Your _friend_? You’d be a Freak enough to do something like that, if you ever have one.”

“Sally,” Sherlock said lowly as he moved forward, “Put him—”

 _“Oh my god!”_ Anderson screeched, throwing himself back from kitchen drawer (decomposition rate of flesh in orange juice, nearly completed) and directly into Donovan’s back. She lurched forward, one hand out to steady herself against the mantel while the skull tumbled from the other.

Sherlock didn’t hear it crack against floor, didn’t hear anything as he watched the mandible break down the centre and frontal bone fracture and then he didn’t see anything, _he couldn’t see_ , and his heart was pounding, echoing in his head, and he felt himself falling forward _why was he doing that_ and he couldn’t hear and he couldn’t see and his heart must have surely been trying to kill him because he couldn't breathe _and he’s still falling wasn't he_ why was everything locking up he needed to stop falling and breathe and see and hear and—

He felt a hand on his wrist, calloused and firm, and another behind his head, guiding him forward, down onto a sturdy shoulder. The hand on his wrist moved to his waist, steadying and supporting as Sherlock’s legs caved.

“Easy now,” someone, a man, murmured, and Sherlock felt the vibrations against his temple. “Just breathe; I know that was sudden, and I apologize, my dear. Just breathe.”

The hand brushed through his hair, and again, and Sherlock timed his gasps to the movement, slowly regaining control. His head was cottony, and he blinked hazily, heavier than any crash he’d ever experienced; his fingertips tingling, just this side of numb. He flexed them, bringing a hand up to grasp shakily at the offered forearm. The arm around his waist retreated some as he pulled his feet back under him, settling on his elbow instead.

“Are you alright?” the man asked, ducking his head a bit to peer at Sherlock’s face. His own was tanned and weathered, laugh lines appearing around the mouth and eyes, stress ones between his brows and on his forehead. What interested Sherlock the most though, was the fire-orange of his eyes.

“You’re dead,” he enunciated carefully. A smile quirked the man’s lips, white teeth flashing briefly beneath his moustache.

“I am,” he nodded. “I have been for quite some time.”

Sherlock frowned at him, his openly warm face not giving Sherlock much to go with. The man waited patiently, his eyes dancing brightly to knowledge only he had.

“Where…?” Sherlock began slowly, but the man shook his head.

“You know where, my dear Sherlock. You have observed but not _seen_ ,” he chided softly, slowly releasing Sherlock. He turned, passing dumbstruck yarders to kneel, gathering the broken skull from the floor.

“The _skull_ ,” Sherlock breathed. He’d always known there was _something_ about the skull. He just never known it was _this_. “Grand-père was right then?”

The man inclined his head. “As were you,” he replied, tapping the fracture before replacing it on the mantel.

“Wait,” Lestrade said, eyes flicking between the two. “You knew he was attach—”

“Sealed,” the man corrected.

“—sealed in that—sealed?” Lestrade turned fully to the man, brows raised.

He nodded, slightly bewildered. “But of course. Before knowledge of the Gates’ closing it was common practice for mediums to perform rituals to purge hauntings. The sealing was an unintended side effect, though it did stop spirits from interfering on the livings’ plane.”

“Mediums?” Sally asked.

“Sensitives,” Lestrade answered.

“And I did not _know_ anyone was with the skull,” Sherlock added sullenly. “I _suspected_ something was different with him, but neither I nor my grand-père could prove anything.”

Sally scoffed, rolling her eyes. “And keeping it made more sense than handing it over to a professional.”

“Like you?” Sherlock snipped.

“At least what I did set him free!”

“Girls!” Lestrade barked.

“What I want to know,” Anderson wondered aloud, “is who the bloody hell he _is_.”

And for the first (and last) time in his life, Sherlock found himself silently agreeing. The blond spirit might have done nothing worse than act slightly over-familiar, but if his solid and very _real_ presence meant anything (and it did), he was old—old and _powerful_.

A part of Sherlock was gleeful: he (likely) found a spirit older than _Anthea_ , and if his theory was right, Mycroft wouldn't be able to lay a hand on the man. Just as a part was wary, because should he be as old as Sherlock estimated, there would be nothing short of another seal that could stop him from doing as he wished.

“Oh,” the man said, turning to Sherlock. “I have had you at a disadvantage. I am Dr John Watson, lived seventh of July, 1852 to the seventh of August, 1879.”

Lestrade whistled. “That is…yeah, that’s a bit older than Anthea.”

“Anthea?”

Sherlock flicked his wrist. “Irrelevant.”

Lestrade shook his head. “ _Not_ irrelevant, Sherlock. You know the oldest a free-spirit can be is fifty, and Dr Watson’s a bit older than that.”

“Please, just John is—”

“Who said he was free?” Sherlock countered, ignoring John’s request. “Did you have your eyes closed when he was released? He’s already Bound.”

“Oh yeah? To who?” Anderson sneered.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sherlock smirked. “He’s Bound to me.”

“And why the hell would he do that?” Sally challenged, crossing her arms.

Sherlock turned to John, raising a brow in inquiry. “Well?”

“Why would I not?” John frowned. “I apologize for not consulting with you, my dear, but I have known you since you were young. There is no one else I would consider.”

Sherlock glanced away to Lestrade, swallowing heavily as the sentiment stuck in his throat. “Now, if that’s all?” he said, motioning pointedly toward the door.

“That is _not_ all, and you know it,” Lestrade replied, standing. “You still haven’t given us what you know about Jennifer Wilson.”

Sherlock groaned, “Oh, for god’s sake—I told you the killer has her phone. Isn’t that enough for you, or do you need me to walk you to it as well?”

“That would be nice,” Lestrade quipped. “Seeing as you also said the killer had her suitcase.”

“He _did_ ,” Sherlock snapped, pacing between the DI and the coffee table. “Obviously he dumped it.”

“But not her phone?”

“He didn’t know he had it at that time.”

“And he still hasn’t got rid of it?”

“In for a penny in for a pound goes the saying, doesn’t it?”

Lestrade sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “We can give tracing it a go. But it’ll take a few hours, not that I expect anything to come of it anyway. Bastard’s been smart so far…”

Sherlock waved a hand. “Go. If I think of anything I’ll contact you.”

Lestrade nodded wearily, and with a final glance at John, motioned for his people to pack it up. The flat free of inhibits, Sherlock collapsed back in his chair to find John in the one opposite, watching him silently.

“You aren’t speaking very much,” Sherlock said, returning John’s stare. He should likely have found it jarring—going from talking at something not only dead, but a representation of death as well to a semi-living being. It should have been awkward, stilted, invasive…but it wasn't (not in the slightest). It was just Sherlock, talking to his usual audience.

John smiled. “You say that as if we have always been able to converse.”

Except _better_.

Sherlock huffed. “You must have opinions, everyone does.”

John tilted his head, conceding the point. “I do, but I am not in the habit of giving them, nor have you asked for them.”

_So much better._

“I’m asking for them now.”

“I imagine you want for a specific opinion, and not just my musings on why the sky is blue.”

Sherlock chuckled lowly, admittedly surprised. “Mm, yes, the case, if you—”

“Yoo-hoo!” Mrs Hudson called, knocking lightly and entering. “Sherlock dear, you should really—Oh!” she startled, staring at John. “I didn’t know you had guests, Sherlock! I’d have brought up some biscuits before you sent him off,” she tutted, delicately folding her arms. “At least you had the decency to call him a cab, it’s getting quite dark out there; he might not have got one otherwise.”

“I didn’t call him a cab,” Sherlock retorted, leaping out of his chair and peering out the window as Mrs Hudson reprimanded him for leaving a guest. But Sherlock tuned her out, tuned everything out because he had been a _massive, blind idiot_. Anderson must have been catching.

“Ah, yes, sorry John, I forgot there’s this, ah, _thing_ I promised to do tonight; you know how it is,” Sherlock rambled, distracted and _planning_ as he shoved his arms in his coat. “Just, uh, wait here, I’ll be back soon—eventually—yes, just wait there and…and have some tea, Mrs Hudson, would you mind…?”

He bounded out the door, onto the street and into the cab. Oh, this was going to be _fun!_

\- - -

“C’mon, Mr ‘olmes,” Jefferson Hope murmured, his pill just before his mouth. “Prove. Me. _Wrong_.”

Sherlock burned. Burned with the surety that he was _right_ , burned with the _need_ to prove to this man, this _ordinary_ man (not a genius, not a proper one or otherwise, as clever as he thinks he’s been. Not a genius like him) how _right_ he was.

He brought his chosen pill to his lips.

Because _chance_ in not genius, and never would be.

Never _could_ be.

\- - -

This was decidedly _not_ fun.

Sherlock begrudgingly sat in the back of the ambulance, persistently shoving their ‘shock blankets’ away. He _knew_ what shock was, had induced it in suspects and witnesses alike (though not always purposeful, he would admit that it had advantages in interrogating). Lestrade took his time in coming to question him (likely punishment for failing to contact him)(as if that was _his_ fault).

“So let me get this straight,” he said, flipping his notes shut to better focus on staring Sherlock down. “You, _you,_ were held at gunpoint by a man twice your age, and told to pick a pill and maybe live, or pick no pill surely die.”

Sherlock glared. “Yes, that seemed to be Hope’s point.”

“And before you both could take your pills,” Lestrade continued, “the suspect dropped dead. No signs of heat attack, stroke, anything. Just dead. And you didn’t see _anything_.”

“He did mention an aneurysm in his brain.”

“Didn’t even sense anything.”

“I felt nothing.”

Lestrade nodded, pursing his lips. “You know, they say that some spirits are powerful enough to keep themselves hidden from people like you,” he said casually, looking pointedly at John watching them from behind the police tape.

“Don’t you dare,” Sherlock growled. “I ordered him to stay home the minute I knew what Hope was. My landlady can confirm.”

Lestrade narrowed his eyes. “Then how is he here?”

“I called him, obviously.”

“Over that distance?”

“Some spirits are powerful enough to hear it,” Sherlock retorted pointedly. “If we’re done here?”

Lestrade rolled his eyes, but released him nonetheless. John held the tape as he ducked under, falling neatly into step beside him.

The silence didn’t last long. “How did you do it?”

John blinked. “Do what?”

Sherlock arched a brow. “Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t suit you. How did you kill Jefferson?”

John shrugged, head held high. “As a doctor in war, you manage to accumulate many debtors. It was not difficult to pull one.”

“He owed you his life?”

“Not directly. One of his great-great-grandfathers had taken a bullet to the leg and I was the surgeon who stopped the infection.”

Sherlock paused, eyeing his companion critically. “How many owe you?”

John smiled, his eyes fondly chiding. “A gentleman does not brag.”

“Then don’t.”

John snorted softly, shaking his head. “Too many to number. I doubt I can ever lay claim to them all.”

Sherlock chuckled lowly, beginning down the street again, his skull— _John_ —by his side. “Want to try?”

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://singularlyobsessed.tumblr.com/), I'm usually doing absolutely nothing.


End file.
